20 Buck Spin   Page 4

Immortal Bird

Thrive On Neglect

20 Buck Spin

Bands mixing sub-genres in underground metal often do so with mixed and inconsistent results. Not so with Chicago’s Immortal Bird who wield their eclectic savagery with meticulous cohesion and sharpened ferocity. Returning with Thrive On Neglect, the band’s second album, and first for 20 Buck Spin, the band takes the perilous road of musical diversity and command it with a bloodthirsty rage. With a multi-layered sound running the gamut from pummeling grind and death metal to dissonant blackened metal, angular noise and complex hardcore, Immortal Bird defy simple categorization. The band’s compositions fuse into strikingly savage songs, vast in their scope and more than the sum of their disparate parts, merging the progressive and destructive into a maelstrom of raging fire. Rae Amitay’s seething vocal exorcisms and targeted lyrical aggression provide the connective tissue holding this stylized violence together. Aided and abetted by the incomparable Dave Otero (Archspire, Cobalt, Khemmis) Thrive On Neglect features a punishingly heavy production ideally suited for the band’s tumultuous arrangements and orchestrated chaos. Nearly four years in the making, this album is a blistering statement of intent from a band ascending into full bloom.

Superstition

The Anatomy Of Unholy Transformation

20 Buck Spin

Drawn from the alluvial darkness and consecrated in the materia prima of unconscious fear, Superstition has come forth as the archon of illimitable lunacy, the purveyor of spiritual violence and the demiurge of psychic malfeasance. As the namesake suggests, Superstition has risen from the perennial mire like a psychological parasite, intent on invoking the ageless horrors of the collective unconscious, and born to serve as a reminder that mankind still has much to fear of the dark. Armed with the sonic weaponry of the traditional pan-American sound, the band bears the torch of its bloodsoaked predecessors and ushers in a new era of venomous death metal. Following the magnetic horror of The Surging Throng Of Evil’s Might demo, the band is poised to unleash the next chapter of parademonic madness through the aural codex aptly named The Anatomy Of Unholy Transformation. Presenting six sonorous incantations of funereal obsession, they have perfected the violent belligerence promised through its previous rudimentary efforts. Driving the burning sword of damnation with searing speed, maniacal riffs and bellicose leads, this album delivers the inceptive sounds that originally marked death metal’s ascendency as the ultimate force of destruction.

Fetid

Steeping Corporeal Mess

20 Buck Spin

***Back in print on vinyl!!! Note price increase.  While home to fertile forests, soaring peaks and copius precipitation, the Pacific Northwest lately has also become a breeding ground for something more nefarious, more grotesque, more… Fetid.  Since 2016 Fetid has steadily swelled like a venereal boil upon death metal’s infected anatomy. The band’s Sentient Pile Of Amorphous Rot demo introduced the mustiest corners of the globe to their abhorrent peculiarities. Now, having sliced into the furthest reaches of some unfortunate’s intestinal mucosa, they’ve ripped out a Steeping Corporeal Mess of festering death metal barbarity.  All one needs to know is that from the opening of “Reeking Within” to the closing moments of “Draped In What Was”, Fetid consume from the inside out, tearing through flesh, liquifying and engulfing the entire host body into formless horror. “Feel it breath, feel your fear, the time is now, they are here…”

Spirit Adrift

Divided By Darkness

20 Buck Spin

***CHECK STOCK!!!  Received an 8.1 rating from Pitchfork.  Flashback to 2017: Spirit Adrift drop their second album Curse Of Conception via 20 Buck Spin, a huge step forward following the debut, and it lands at #2 in Decibel Magazine’s best albums of the year, carving out a sound now patently its own. Lazily labelled “doom” by some, the band is in fact the true representation of what modern heavy metal should be, a direct descendent of the widely-appealing arena-filling superstars of the ’80s and ’90s without a whiff of anachronistic cosplay fantasies.  Spirit Adrift’s third album Divided By Darkness delivers on the promise first revealed on that aforementioned second and then advances far beyond it in every way, achieving a timeless piece for the ages. First single “Hear Her” pummels with the concise urgency and unforgettable chorus of a vital radio hit, while “Angel & Abyss” has the classic progression that leads from reflective ballad to rapturous anthemic triumph. The continued evolution of Nathan Garrett as a top vocal talent in modern heavy metal shines through amidst the masterful musicianship and huge production value engineered by Sanford Parker.  Among the many stylistic divergences within rock and metal, this album understands that there is no substitute for huge ambition, soul-bearing lyricism, and most importantly the ability of a pristinely penned riff and impassioned chorus to alter hearts and minds. Astonishingly, this is the band’s heaviest and most accessible album to date and will stand as the apex of...

Magic Circle

Departed Souls

20 Buck Spin

Magic Circle’s self-titled debut hit the true doom scene like a revelation in 2013. Without hype or hyperbole the band effortlessly invoked fundamental rock ‘n’ roll truths putting their own stamp on early heavy metal darkness. Joining 20 Buck Spin for follow-up Journey Blind, the band again offered that unmistakable classic sound with natural unforced evolution. On their third album, Departed Souls, they present an expansive hard rock vision, adorning their signature doom with seamless psych and prog ornamentation.  This latest album reveals a Magic Circle delving more deeply into ’70s sounds, expanding farther outward from the primordial Iommic matter of their birth. Heavy Sabbathian riffs abound, but they open up, stretch out, and expose different shades that recall the moody peaks and valleys of the classic hard rock albums of that era. Acoustic 12-string, tablas and Fender Rhodes appear in lush moments of kaleidoscopic decadence woven into the fabric of the pounding elemental thunder. All the while vocalist Brendan Radigan seals the deal as one of the premier heavy metal singers of the 21st century, deliverin’ that Wagnerian dynamism and vigor that screams from the heavens and becomes thoroughly controlled in moments of quiet solemnity. Though all members are busy with other projects and other lives, when these five come together in the Magic Circle, the chemistry and palpable rock ‘n’ roll exhilaration reminds one that this band ain’t never gonna die with the herd.

Noisem

Cease To Exist

20 Buck Spin

Baltimore’s Noisem return from the dead with their third album Cease To Exist: leaner, meaner, with a new label and new life. After heavy momentum with second album Blossoming Decay and subsequent touring including the 2015 Decibel Magazine tour supporting Carcass, Gorguts and The Black Dahlia Murder, the band seemingly disappeared only to re-emerge in 2018 in new form and ready to resume their place among the most promising young bands in metal. Keeping with the tradition of the most classic grindcore albums, Cease To Exist is an immediately aggressive attack of confrontational energy, pushing the pace with a withering ten tracks over twenty-two minutes. An eruption of grinding blastbeats, unceasing Death-thrash riffs and an acidic vocal snarl to rival prime Jeff Walker, this album quells any notion that the band would ease up with time. If anything, this is their most seethingly vicious inwardly dark album yet.  Far from being a typical grindcore record, be prepared for a cacophony of grind / death / thrash / punk / hardcore, seamlessly blended, blistered and set on fire. Having now re-emerged with a furious new album and live actions, Noisem make a full circle statement of intent: a savage declaration in the face of an ever more bleak future.

Ossuarium

Living Tomb

20 Buck Spin

***CHECK STOCK!!!  Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork.  To start the 2019 campaign off with continued crushing precedent, 20 Buck Spin introduces Portland’s Ossuarium and their debut album Living Tomb. Following on the heels of the widely hailed and brutal Calcified Trophies Of Violence demo in 2017, the band’s first full length record reveals immediate maturation to ruinous and overwhelming effect.  A formidable death / doom monstrosity, where devastating sonic bludgeoning gives way to writhing hallucinations of disemboweling transcendence, Ossuarium conveys the calamitous aura of still burdened souls agonizingly leaving the mortal coil to the region of final darkness and perpetual rot. Time melts away, colorless dreams turn to endless nightmares and the pillars of eternity tremble at the dreadful permanence of the Living Tomb. In crafting their debut album, the band creates a funereal rite of irrevocable passage to the other side. They do so with the grandiose power and putrid elegance of the best in the genre. This Living Tomb has opened to wrathful consequence and will never again rest in peace.

Ulthar

Cosmovore

20 Buck Spin

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Ulthar create something uniquely arcane within the Bay Area metal underground. The trio comes together on their debut full length Cosmovore to unleash its feral urgency for dizzying Absu-like black metal with death metal’s bludgeoning violence. Thematically heavy on weird and supernatural horror with a bizarre Rudimentary Peni-like surrealism, the band are a difficult to classify spectral entity. Over the course of the album’s forty minutes, the band careens forward at primarily unrelenting velocity, with the opening title track instantly battering with primal persistence. The album’s middle section, a blinding storm of ghastly black dread, leads into the thirteen-plus minute epic “Dunwich Whore” where the Ulthar universe becomes all consuming with proggy synth bookends, vertiginous tempo variation, grinding technical violence, and thrashed madness. Yet another stellar debut album released under the 20 Buck Spin banner, Cosmovore can be seen as the monstrous opening salvo for a band only starting to wage war.

Slasher Dave

Frights

20 Buck Spin

Slasher Dave, the formidable frontman of Detroit’s Acid Witch, and 20 Buck Spin have united forces to bring a special treat for this year’s Halloween loot bag. On Frights, his fourth solo record, Dave introduces a heavier side to the instrumental synth album world. Terrifying industrial rhythms pulse through a stark electronic soundscape of analog synthesizers, pounding bass, distorted guitars, warped lo-fi horror samples and sedulous sound design. The entire album is written, recorded, mixed and produced by Dave, and, as with his past solo releases, he handled all artwork and design as well. Timed for release as All Hallow’s Eve approaches, this release is just as creepy as it is entertaining. These twelve nightmares of deranged horror-synth are sure to send chills down the spine on Halloween, but will fulfill any horror fiends lust for the strange and unusual year around.

Deadbird

III: The Forest Within The Tree

20 Buck Spin

A decade has now passed since the release of Twilight Ritual, the second album from Little Rock’s Deadbird. Though much has changed in the metal world since then, ten years on the band remains steadfast in their ability to sculpt heartwrenching and gutsy songs from the deepest, darkest places within. Years of toil and scorched southern soil went into the band’s third album III: The Forest Within The Tree, resulting in forty haunting minutes of emotive turbulence and resolute grit.  An intense listen from the outset, after “The Singularity” intro, the one-two punch of “Luciferous Heart” and “Heyday” carry the weight of the grandiose and the grave, burning with furor and primordial light. At times dipping into quietly morose acoustics and at others crushing with a Neurosis-like magnitude, Deadbird offer the scope of the world weary and of sentiment laid bare on compositions like “Brought Low” and “Bone & Ash.”  Ten years is not a short time between albums, but the passing of years have solidified this band into an entity well versed in the art of vigilance. The eight tracks comprising this release are their best to date and signal the awakening of new day for the band.

Scorched

Ecliptic Butchery

20 Buck Spin

Scorched return with their second full length experiment in barbarity. Earlier in 2018, 20 Buck Spin collected the body of Scorched non-LP material onto the Excavated For Evisceration platter, reintroducing the band under the label’s banner. And yet that collection served as mere appetizer to the main course of Ecliptic Butchery, a sadistic tale of deep space terror and desolate inhumanity smeared in blood red brutality.  The eerie bizarre intro of “Blood Splatter Eclipse” sets the unearthly mood of a place far beyond. The band fades in with a savagely slow churn indicating a crossover to a domain where piercing shrieks of pain are to be indifferently lost in the lifeless expanse of the void. The hopeless punishment continues as “Exhibits Of Torture” are everywhere and the “Mortuary Of Nightmares” leads only deeper into the horror until finally a formless mass of “Dissected Humanity” is all that remains.  Produced, mixed and mastered by Arthur Rizk (Tomb Mold, Pissgrave, Prurient), this impossibly heavy recording, seething and slicing, exemplifies the ideal Scorched operating theater for the band’s uniquely gut-wrenching death metal—simply, one of the most malicious onslaughts of 2018.

Extremity

Coffin Birth

20 Buck Spin

Oakland’s Extremity burst like a pustule onto the death metal scene in 2017 with their mini-LP Extremely Fucking Dead. Five ferocious tracks gave the first taste of what was to come, and now the band returns with its debut full length album Coffin Birth, a hideous ode to the scene’s past and present. Right from the start of the menacing opening intro / track of “Coffin Birth / A Million Witches,” the band brutalize with a hammer of pulverizing devastation and a defined melodic sensibility. Memorable and outright catchy songs that seamlessly veer from grinding speed to crushingly mid-paced unfold via a sordid concept that may reveal itself with careful attention.  Once again recorded at Oakland’s Earhammer Studios, the birthplace for so many of today’s standout metal releases, this album boasts both surgical clarity and pummeling raw aggression. In combination with the attention to detail in both song and lyric writing, Extremity exhume a debut album born straight from a coffin.

Khemmis

Desolation

20 Buck Spin

Anticipation was high for the release of Hunted in 2016, the sophomore album from Denver’s Khemmis and follow up to acclaimed debut Absolution. Rather than the all too common sophomore slump, the band raised the stakes and blew everyone away with their rapidly progressing songwriting and production quality, culminating in Hunted being named Album Of The Year for 2016 by Decibel Magazine.  Now in 2018, after wrapping up the Decibel Magazine Tour with Enslaved, Wolves In The Throne Room and Myrkur, the excitement for their third album Desolation is palpable across the metal spectrum. From the stadium-sized opening notes of “Bloodletting,” it is immediately evident that the band are again putting distance between themselves and their earlier influences to inform a sound that is singularly their own. Working for the third time with Dave Otero at Flatline Audio in Denver, the band and producer now have the familiarity and mutual experience to arrive at the perfect symbiosis of songwriting, arrangement and production value.  While Khemmis are undeniably influenced by doom and classic metal, to tag them with those labels doesn’t do justice to what’s accomplished on this album, a perfect representation of modern heavy metal in 2018 that integrates the past in a way only possible in the present.

Tomb Mold

Manor Of Infinite Forms

20 Buck Spin

***Note price change. Bubbling up from the oozing sewers of Toronto like a bizarre insectoid of mutant genotype, Tomb Mold reanimates with their second album, and first for 20 Buck Spin, Manor Of Infinite Forms. Constructing monumental towers of obscure shape, jarring yet coherent, this band’s compositions evoke a distorted world alongside this one, where all manner of oddity and peculiarity are permitted.  Songs on this album move in strange ways, recklessly contorting into cohesion until suddenly they’re proceeding with a force and purpose in perfect synchronicity to the universe that contains them. Disharmoniously melding the pulverizing heaviness of Finnish death metal with a never overbearing technicality, Tomb Mold careen through world after world of alien landscape with formidable singularity.  Tracked in Toronto, this then landed in the hands of Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Pissgrave, Code Orange) to achieve its organically huge mix. A remarkable puzzle of an album, Manor Of Infinite Forms constitutes a creative high point for 2018’s many strong death metal releases.

Torture Rack

Malefic Humiliation

20 Buck Spin

The Pacific Northwest continues to be a stronghold for relevant new death metal in 2018 with Portland’s Torture Rack among the few that are leading the pack. This second album, Malefic Humiliation, captures the savagery of their live shows, which have become the stuff of legend; subtlety bludgeoned, beaten and hacked to nothing but a red mess of leftovers.  With a lineup that includes members of label mates Witch Vomit, this band carves out their mark on the festering corpse of the Northwest with this release, bashing through nine tracks in just under thirty minutes. “Mace Face,” “Corpse Revenge” and “Destined For Dogmeat” ain’t for the faint and the vile cover art by Sebastian Mazuera makes real the sole intent of the band: barbarism.

Superstition

Surging Throng Of Evil’s Might

20 Buck Spin

***BACK IN PRINT ON VINYL!!!  Despite the explosive re-emergence of death metal during the last ten or so years, few bands in the U.S. have sought to carry on the faithful legacy of early evil in American death in a manner that wasn’t a pale forgery. To that end, Superstition manifest from the ancient landscape of New Mexico with their debut Surging Throng Of Evil’s Might, heralding the return of perdition’s flame.  Unpolished malevolence dripping with vile iniquity, occultic force and eerie demonic sentience is draped across the audial essence of the band’s debut, from the hellish introduction of “Death’s Fuming Passage” to the closing keys of “Grave Portals.” The very primordial elements of the abyssic fire are summoned in this ancient invocation.  Ready to pierce the sacrificial lamb and open the gates in the U.S and beyond, Superstition presage the permanence of darkness in the material plane this summer on tour with Spectral Voice and Mortiferum. This album is only the beginning to the plague of the Superstition.

Ghastly

Death Velour

20 Buck Spin

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  While Finland’s Ghastly may be a new name to many, those who delve deeply enough into the death metal underworld, as 20 Buck Spin often does, will recall the band’s debut album Carrion Of Time released a few years back on cult tastemaker label Me Saco Un Ojo (Morbus Chron, Undergang, Phrenelith). A few years have passed and the band now resurfaces with their masterfully executed second album Death Velour. While there’s no question this is a pure death metal album, it could hardly be confused with most of the current bands making the rounds. The nightmarish hallucinatory sound Ghastly invokes conjures the horror of rotting in incomprehensible obscurity, passing into oblivion guided by a many-colored specter of strange origin across the Styx. An air of psych-induced weirdness and shrieking dread permeates the decomposed palette throughout the album’s cryptic duration.  Like discovering a forgotten relic of mysterious brilliance from the early Finnish death metal scene, this album is a phantasm of blinding light onto the foreboding darkness of this mortal coil.

Mournful Congregation

The Incubus Of Karma

20 Buck Spin

***Back in stock on vinyl!!!  After more than six years since The Book Of Kings, Mournful Congregation, Australia’s stone pillar of funereal dirge, presents their regal fourth full-length, The Incubus Of Karma. Since that time the band has made several trips to the U.S. and Europe, released the mini-album Concrescence Of The Sophia, and increased their reputation as the pinnacle of extreme / funeral doom and as one of the most influential bands in the genre.  Throughout these intervening years the band has also been meticulously crafting this new masterpiece. Everything that has made them the unchallenged masters of this style is here: the agonizing weight of extreme doom riffs, bitterly sombre dissonance, a painterly attention to detail and arrangement, and vocals summoned from the deepest hole. And as with each album before, the band expands upon their unique progressive tendencies, weaving beautifully constructed solos and lengthy virtuoso interludes into a bleak-yet-intricate tapestry of stately grandeur. An incredible twenty-five years into their existence, Mournful Congregation persist in refining and perfecting their immortal art.

Scorched

Excavated For Evisceration

20 Buck Spin

For the past few years Delaware’s Scorched have steadily built a reputation for classic savage Northeast-style death metal featuring skull-caving heaviness, video-nasty warped synth interludes, and a cinematic taste for the gruesome and murderous.  Their 2016 debut Echoes Of Dismemberment was as subtle as a brain-matter-covered sledgehammer, a paean to everything that makes death metal still relevant, with an ever-growing fanbase after thirty years. Later this year, 20 Buck Spin will release their second full length, but first is Excavated For Evisceration, a vinyl-only introduction to the band on the label. It collects their sadistic 2017 promo tape Hymns From The Cellar on one side and the ferocious 2015 demo on the other. Through both of these recordings and their punishing live show, Scorched emerge to take the reins of the next wave of U.S. blood-red brutality.

Daeva

Pulsing Dark Absorptions

20 Buck Spin

Once in a black moon a band of truly terrible people emerge with no regard for societal norms or common decency. An ingrained shitty attitude makes life generally miserable, and yet provides some of the most raging, sinister and unhinged underground metal this side of the Styx. Philly’s Daeva (da-ay-vuh) harness their shitty guy mentality, sharpened over many years and many beers to an acidic burn, and pour it into their debut 12-inch Pulsing Dark Absorptions, a snarling beast of blackthrash discord.  While reference points won’t be hard to identify, few bands manage to sound as energized and dexterous as this while swinging the axe of execution on first wave black metal, dissonant thrash and evil rock ’n’ roll. With a vocalist that goes from venomous rasp to mentally deranged to perfect aggressor inside the same song, this band slashes, bashes and gnashes through four original compositions with one simple message to convey: fuck off. Finally, a poser corpsing “Deathcrush” cover closes the B-side with a rusty saw blade to the throat. So wipe that smirk off, set the player to 45 and absorb Daeva’s pulsing darkness.

Spirit Adrift

Curse Of Conception

20 Buck Spin

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  While many took notice of their debut album Chained To Oblivion, Curse Of Conception, Spirit Adrift’s stellar second album and first with new label 20 Buck Spin, takes a giant leap forward in songwriting prowess, production and confidence. From the Metallica-slash-Priest-like opening moments of “Earthbound” to the epic closing of “Onward, Inward,” this band aims sky high with burning focus and peak vigor.  Indeed, “Earthbound” is a standard bearer for album-openers, leading into the colossal title track, a grungy and twisting radio-ready crawler. “To Fly On Broken Wings” and “Graveside Invocation” continue to show that any of these eight tracks could stand as singles. Throughout the album, brick-heavy riffs, somber southern atmospherics, and grand melodies entwine flawlessly into perfect metallic majesty. Now more than ever, metal has become the lifeblood of rock music and this is an embodiment of that perseverant vitality.

Acephalix

Decreation

20 Buck Spin

***CHECK STOCK!!!  Received a 7.4 rating from Pitchfork.  The rotten corpse of Acephalix, the Bay Area’s beast of barbarism, has been re-animated. Abnormally deceased since the band’s Southern Lord debut Deathless Master, the crushing return of Decreation leaves no bone unbroken and no skull intact. Foul American death metal maggotry eating back to life coagulated remains of hardcore’s guts. Opener “Upon This Altar” rages with d-beat ferocity morphing into a slithering puzzle of pierced flesh. Primitive savagery pervades on “Suffer (Life In Fragments)” through to the cro-magnon battering of “Excremental Offerings.” All the while an obscure weirdness that characterizes the idiosyncratic deformities of certain Cannibal Corpse, Nocturnus and Death moments arises out of the Acephalix tomb. With each release the band’s horde grows more intense, vicious and bestial. This album is the culmination of five years of dormancy, letting loose upon the Earth the calamitous consequence of pent up wrath.

Noothgrush / Corrupted

Noothgrush / Corrupted Split

20 Buck Spin

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  It’s hard to believe that twenty years have passed since two of the bleakest purveyors of doomed psychosis, namely Noothgrush and Corrupted, unleashed thirty-five minutes of suffering. Perhaps thought buried by grime and rust, this much sought-after split LP has now been excavated in 2017 and given a fresh layer of tar via remastered audio and new artwork. Today there are countless bands mining every single facet of what is mostly incorrectly called doom. This split reminds us that “sludge,” doom’s most nihilistic offshoot, wasn’t about upbeat warm waves of “stoner” riffs and top-dollar vintage tees, but about landfills of hatred, misery and self-loathing, a total negation of life and a completely uncompromising and untrendy sound—music that wants to punish you and itself. Oakland’s Hal Rotter provides the split with new art appropriately conveying the grim atmosphere within and Brad Boatright’s remaster enhances the all consuming dread that makes even the bleakest Vitus moments sound cheerful by comparison.

Weapönizer

Lawless Age

20 Buck Spin

Denver’s Weapönizer have existed since 2009, unleashing several releases including a debut full length in 2012. This year everything comes together on their wild and unbound second album Lawless Age, their first in collaboration with 20 Buck Spin. While one can recognize a variety of metallic sub-genre tags in the band’s sound, from raw black metal to post-apocalyptic thrash to Aussie war-metal to anarchic crossover, it’s all menacingly welded menacingly into an indestructible shining alloy of slashing American steel. A faster disaster with an unrelenting pace, the tasteful-yet-crazed guitar solos combined with the band’s commitment to songcraft make this album a celebratory and definitive vindication of underground metal’s continued relevance. Arriving at the opportune moment, it envisions a near-future technocratic dystopia that seems all too possible.

Witch Vomit

Poisoned Blood

20 Buck Spin

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Note price increase. The subtly monikered Witch Vomit from Portland, OR, offered thee obscure gem of the 2016 death metal underground with their A Scream From The Tomb Below full length. Many took note, and now 20 Buck Spin offers the first bloody taste of a new partnership with the band in the Poisoned Blood EP. Offering four new tracks and intro equaling over twenty minutes, this release is one of the most brutal recordings to come out of the Northwest in recent memory. Ranging from blasting deathgrind, foul Finnish obscurity and liquified cannibalistic necromancy, the riffs on this bubble up like slimy green rot leaking from crypt walls. Though the core membership of Witch Vomit also performs surgeries for barbaric persecutors Torture Rack, and the two bands share a propensity for blasting storms of seared flesh chunks and glistening old guts, this band is mixing its mashed bone stew with a wider array of viscera, melting brains with ancient violence and intensity.

Oranssi Pazuzu

Farmokologinen

20 Buck Spin

Since 2013 Finland’s Oranssi Pazuzu has released two critically lauded full length albums via 20 Buck Spin in North America, 2013’s Valonielu and 2016’s Värähtelijä. Both albums showed the boundless enormity and remarkable uniqueness that this band alone creates. Are they a psych-influenced black metal band or a black-metal-influenced psych band? No one knows for sure and it doesn’t matter anyway—no other band bends these genres into such an extraordinarily cohesive whole. For most in North America, the Oranssi Pazuzu black hole only came into focus with the aforementioned last two albums. However, the band has previously recorded and released two full length albums and a split LP. With their growing reputation here, their back catalog has become increasingly in demand. 20 Buck Spin will now present the band’s back catalog on various formats domestically for the first time. The Farmokologinen 12-inch contains songs from a split album the band did in 2010 between their first and second full lengths. On these four tracks nearly 27 minutes in length, the band showcases their growing immensity and burning cold bleakness, now a stand-alone release with all new artwork, on vinyl and digital formats.

Oranssi Pazuzu

Kosmonument

20 Buck Spin

Since 2013 Finland’s Oranssi Pazuzu has released two critically lauded full length albums via 20 Buck Spin in North America, 2013’s Valonielu and 2016’s Värähtelijä. Both albums showed the boundless enormity and remarkable uniqueness that this band alone creates. Are they a psych-influenced black metal band or a black-metal-influenced psych band? No one knows for sure and it doesn’t matter anyway—no other band bends these genres into such an extraordinarily cohesive whole. For most in North America, the Oranssi Pazuzu black hole only came into focus with the aforementioned last two albums. However, the band has previously recorded and released two full length albums and a split LP. With their growing reputation here, their back catalog has become increasingly in demand. 20 Buck Spin will now present the band’s back catalog on various formats domestically for the first time. The Kosmonument 2xLP from 2012 was another huge leap forward for the band both musically and in terms of exposure. They signed to UMG-owned Spinefarm Records, which the album still calls home today. However the vinyl edition, a sprawling, triple-gatefold double album with some of the most incredible artwork in the band’s history, was only released in a small quantity in Europe with very few copies arriving in North America. It will now see its first domestic vinyl release in the same deluxe format.

Oranssi Pazuzu

Muukalainen Puhuu

20 Buck Spin

Since 2013 Finland’s Oranssi Pazuzu has released two critically lauded full length albums via 20 Buck Spin in North America, 2013’s Valonielu and 2016’s Värähtelijä. Both albums showed the boundless enormity and remarkable uniqueness that this band alone creates. Are they a psych-influenced black metal band or a black-metal-influenced psych band? No one knows for sure and it doesn’t matter anyway—no other band bends these genres into such an extraordinarily cohesive whole. For most in North America, the Oranssi Pazuzu black hole only came into focus with the aforementioned last two albums. However, the band has previously recorded and released two full length albums and a split LP. With their growing reputation here, their back catalog has become increasingly in demand. 20 Buck Spin will now present the band’s back catalog on various formats domestically for the first time. Muukalainen Puhuu is where the Oranssi Pazuzu story begins. This 2009 debut full length already reveals a band with a firm conceptual and musical mission. For most, this album would be a seasoned, mature display of musical prowess only reached well into their life as a band, and yet for them it’s merely the first foray into the limitless expanse that they would come to command.

Foreseen HKI

Grave Danger

20 Buck Spin

Returning a few years and a few tours after their debut album Helsinki Savagery set the world ablaze, Finland’s Foreseen HKI are back with the topically resonant savage crossover burst Grave Danger, their second album for 20 Buck Spin. Continuing the direction of its predecessor, this album delivers the punishingly relentless pace and aggression now firmly established by the band’s iron hammer. Scraping, throat-ripping vocals with lacerating thrash hardcore breakdowns twist seamlessly with an 80s heavy metal tenacity, exemplified on tracks like “Fearmonger,”,“Bloodline” and “Chemical Heritage.” The band embraces social commentary and critique throughout, as heard in “Government Cuts” and “Suicide Bomber,” for example. With new albums from several of the leading crossover bands of the current era being released in early 2017, Foreseen HKI are set to carry the banner for the United Forces representing Finland and Europe in a genre particularly known and grown in the U.S. — a perfect moment in time to unleash the fury of a politically-minded, no-joke European invasion into North America.

Oranssi Pazuzu

Kevät / Värimyrsky

20 Buck Spin

Oranssi Pazuzu’s Kevät / Värimyrsky 10-inch was released earlier in 2017 and sold exclusively by the band at their mind-bending live performances. Now that the band has wrapped up their live schedule for the year, the remaining copies of this one-time-only pressing are available from 20 Buck Spin. Featuring two tracks not on any other release, this limited release is a much sought after item in the band’s canon.  “Although not ‘new’ in every sense of the word—the first song ‘Kevät’ was recorded during the Valonielu sessions in 2013, but left out from the album because it’s darker mood didn’t quite seem to fit in with the other songs’ more cosmic approach. The second, ‘Värimyrsky,’ is also an older and more nihilistic one, that we have been playing with for a long time, and now finally decided to record it in our home cave with the help from our brother-in-wastement Jussi Saarivuori.” —Oranssi Pazuzu

Extremity

Extremely Fucking Dead

20 Buck Spin

Gestating in the twisted bowels of the Bay Area for six years, only now, in 2017, has Extremity dislodged itself from the musty climes of obscurity to contaminate the American death metal cesspool. Like a jaundiced plume drifting up from a fetid swamp, on Extremely Fucking Dead the four-piece infects their audience with odiously oozing intentions. From the grisly gore metal of “Crepuscular Crescendo” to the Bolt Thrower ravaged plunder permeating “Bestial Destiny”, Extremity presents a simultaneously studied and loosely devastating specter of death metal cited from the genre’s many epicenters in America, Scandinavia, the UK and beyond. The veteran lineup of Shelby Lermo (Vastum), Aesop Dekker (Worm Ouroboros, Ludicra, Agalloch), Marissa Martinez-Hoadley (Cretin, Repulsion) and Erika Osterhout (Necrosic, Scolex, Trepanation) stirs the salaciously sanguine death and grind sewage on this debut to a crepitating clamor of cacophonous cruelty.

Vastum

Carnal Law

20 Buck Spin

Vastum’s 2015 album, Hole Below, set a horrifying new precedent for punishing but cerebral US death metal that echoed throughout the underground. Carnal Law, the band’s formidable debut from 2011, is a testament to their mental and physical prowess, starting from the very beginning.  Issued on vinyl by Deific Mourning / Contagion Releasing (CD on 20 Buck Spin) in a one-time limited version of 500 copies, this album disappeared and has since been unavailable on vinyl for five years, until now, with a fresh punishing re-master courtesy of Brad Boatwright at Audiosiege. Both the progressive and regressive elements that made Hole Below such a heralded monument of death metal were evident already here: tasteful, recognizable leads — not unlike the virtuosity one notes in mid-period Death or Carcass — appear throughout but never overwhelm the fetid odor of vice at the album’s core. Like the paramount albums of the genre, Carnal Law makes its point quickly and resolutely, with viciousness and intent.

Vastum

Carnal Law (colored)

20 Buck Spin

*** Limited GOLD Vinyl version EXCLUSIVE to Revolver USA. Vastum’s 2015 album, Hole Below, set a horrifying new precedent for punishing but cerebral US death metal that echoed throughout the underground. Carnal Law, the band’s formidable debut from 2011, is a testament to their mental and physical prowess, starting from the very beginning.  Issued on vinyl by Deific Mourning / Contagion Releasing (CD on 20 Buck Spin) in a one-time limited version of 500 copies, this album disappeared and has since been unavailable on vinyl for five years, until now, with a fresh punishing re-master courtesy of Brad Boatwright at Audiosiege. Both the progressive and regressive elements that made Hole Below such a heralded monument of death metal were evident already here: tasteful, recognizable leads — not unlike the virtuosity one notes in mid-period Death or Carcass — appear throughout but never overwhelm the fetid odor of vice at the album’s core. Like the paramount albums of the genre, Carnal Law makes its point quickly and resolutely, with viciousness and intent.

Ominous Circle

Appalling Ascension

20 Buck Spin

With membership from the blinding light regions of Portugal, The Ominous Circle is a burning black sphere of sinuous torment taking shape over their native land. Appalling Ascension is their initiation into this upper physical world, undulating like a prophesied curse into the increasing chaos of modern “life.” While the reverent tropes of contemporary Death Metal will be recognizable to Circle adherents, the cauldron is mixed in myriad conjurations that stray from the safety where inferior forces are prone to linger. Moments of oppressive Death Doom, grinding blasts of mania, rancid melodies and mid-tempo dynamic necromancy on tracks like “From Endless Chasms” and “As The Worm Descends” canonize these odious psalms into timeless lore. The obsession of late by some to ignore songwriting in favor of cavernous ambient suffocating “evil” doesn’t play on Appalling Ascension—here instead, and most welcome, are crushing and barbarous Dark Death Metal songs to which initiates may devote themselves, as it enters into the pantheon of memorable debut recordings. And in the fashion of the most auspicious horror, this is only the beginning...

Khemmis

Hunted

20 Buck Spin

***BACK IN STOCK ON LIMITED ULTRA CLEAR W/ ELECTRIC BLUE, SILVER, WHITE SPLATTER VINYL!!!  Named #2 Best Album of the Decade by Decibel Magazine.  Back in print on CD and available again on Black Vinyl! Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork.  Khemmis’s first album, Absolution, was released by 20 Buck Spin in July 2015 and steamrolled all that came in contact with its unforgettable heaviness and classic melodicism. Virtually unknown outside Denver at the time, by year’s end they had landed in the #9 spot on Decibel’s annual top 40 albums of the year. Hunted reveals a Khemmis fortified in its purpose and vision, forging an unrivaled synthesis between immense doom riffs and Maiden-esque harmony. Overall song length has increased, yielding expansive arrangements and dramatic storms of elegance and melancholy. Not content to plod through a sea of tears, and always a rock band first, they approach a High On Fire-like pace with the pummeling “Three Gates.” The lauded singing of vocalist Philip Pendergast reaches ascendent new heights on tracks like “Candlelight” and “Beyond The Door,” while the tasteful use of harsh vocals remains, providing a dark, foreboding contrast. The thirteen-minute title track closes the album with an epic stunner. Hunted will solidify Khemmis’s place at the vanguard of doom’s most notable modernmanifestations, in large part because they transcend the label itself.

Coffins

(colored Vinyl) Buried Death

20 Buck Spin

***White / sea blue colored vinyl edition! 20 Buck Spin finally unleashes the first vinyl repress of Coffins’ seminal, long-out-of-print third album Buried Death to commemorate the release of their new full-length on Relapse Records, their first in five years. This edition is available on both black vinyl and blue / white “haze” colored vinyl and duplicates the original’s layout including gatefold sleeve. On Buried Death, the Tokyo band established themselves as one of the underground’s leading purveyors of neanderthal-paced doom / death metal. Previous releases, The Other Side of Blasphemy and Mortuary in Darkness, introduced Coffins’ black-tar dirge to an audience eager for slowppressive, maniac riffs and songs that dragged like the knuckles of a lumbering simian. This is derivative and true rather then progressive and new, with an effectiveness unmatched in today’s underground. Immediately battering the listener with the opening sledgehammer “Under the Stench,” Buried Death crawls forward through the band’s catchiest tracks ever, such as the Celtic-Frost-at-16-RPM narcoplunder of “Cadaver Blood.” The patented brick-heavy guitar tone remains, while the band delivers some additional solos and high vocal screams, hinted at on 2006’s The Other Side of Blasphemy album. Rather than toy with forced “evolution,” Coffins has instead sharpened and honed its devolved sound further toward primitive singlemindedness.  “... seas of fire that dare to cease into one great phallic tree of scorched black magma; plate-shifting, fault-felling divergence. That’s goddamned guitar tone.” —Stewart Voegtlin, Dusted

Auroch

From Forgotten Worlds

20 Buck Spin

Looming over Vancouver, BC, is an invisible dark energy, trapped in shadow, that imbues the region’s death metal with a most turbulent methodology. Blasting outside time and out of mind, reaching deep into the lowest places of the Earth, the inhuman entity called Auroch encapsulates the distant, thousand-eyed doom of the cosmos, long hidden, frozen to the core and ripe to be awakened once more. From Forgotten Worlds assails throughout its duration, summoning incongruous black symmetry, with onerous dark death metal chaos that extends a direct blood lineage traced back to Morbid Angel, Gorguts, Timeghoul, Kataklysm, Cryptopsy and other reapers of the whirlwind. Rites such as “Pathogenic Talisman (For Total Temporal Collapse),” “Fleshless Ascension (Paths of Dawn)” and the opening title hymn rip across the skies, rending flesh from sickly bones of the fallen. Pulled from obscurity and issued for the first time on vinyl, featuring completely new and improved artwork by Cold Poison (Acherontas, Nightbringer, Dodsengel), From Forgotten Worlds marks the beginning of an increased period of ferocity for Auroch with several US festival appearances and shows confirmed, and additional releases to come.

Oranssi Pazuzu

Värähtelijä

20 Buck Spin

***AVAILABLE AGAIN ON BABY BLUE VINYL!!!  In 2013, Finland’s Oranssi Pazuzu issued their Valonielu LP, an album of timeless creative immensity that was met with ubiquitous praise throughout the world and solidified the group’s position as one of the most forward-thinking and interesting metal bands. Now, in the early months of 2016, Oranssi Pazuzu returns with their followup album and fourth overall, the mind-bending masterwork Värähtelijä. Oranssi Pazuzu has never been satisfied to stick with a formula. Each release has expanded upon the band’s previous incarnation and then, like a supernova, blown it up and transformed again into something recognizable but completely new. Värähtelijä continues in this vein, giving the band much more room to diverge and explore the vast regions of hypnotic progressive psychedelia and the nebulous outer limits of Scandinavian black metal. Songs explode with radiant ultraviolet color and plunge into the deep black darkness of innermost consciousness. If Valonielu was the creation of a universe, Värähtelijä is the magnification and expansion of its infinite boundaries. A 70+ minute sprawling voyage, Värähtelijä more accurately represents the band’s stunning live presence where the songs often span new and previously unheard dimensions of form and structure. Not meant for genre purists, Oranssi Pazuzu are on a trip all their own—modern electric pioneers on an expedition to unlock the keys to the hidden spaces all around and inside us. 20 Buck Spin is pleased to once again present the innovative brilliance of Oranssi Pazuzu and Värähtelijä.

Vastum

Hole Below

20 Buck Spin

***NOW ON LIMITED BLOOD W/BLACK SPLATTER VINYL!!! The verbose horror of Vastum’s first two LPs Carnal Law and Patricidal Lust sadistically carved a jagged, dripping wound into an increasingly reductive American death metal scene. Arising again for their third full-length album, they plumb the depths of internalized agony and degradation farther than ever on Hole Below. Characterized by a deeply cavernous trudge through gut-churning heaviness, Hole Below both bluntly crushes and rigorously shreds to conceive fully formed grotesqueries of debased brutality. Guitarist Leila Abdul-Rauf wields her axe with the experienced slice of masked executioner quartering savage riffs and twisting leads. The abhorrent vocal (and lyrical) morbidity traded by imposing frontman Daniel Butler and Abdul-Rauf continues to be the most formidable combination in death metal. Along with guitarist Shelby Lermo, the intimidating rhythm section of Luca Indrio and Adam Perry steer the war machine through the pooled blood and skull fragments scattered amidst the debauched iniquity of this peculiar hell. Three albums in, this respected San Francisco band has honed their disturbed masochism into a sound manifestly their own and true to the core of the purest, darkest death metal. 20 Buck Spin presents Hole Below as one of the finest albums this year.

Magic Circle

Journey Blind

20 Buck Spin

Who said anything about running out of ideas? The stubborn ones were born to linger, to nose out newer, more subtle permutations with the help from a few ragged fucks willing to practice them. Magic Circle mutt roll in heavy metal whatness, striking a balance with the pituitary culture it begat, and the tunes it jacked out. Suburban drag races. Basement bum wine scrum. Every collective thought burnt into a dirty tape dub of Mob Rules. Sabbath, especially in its later incarnations, hulks ephemerally among all openings, rests and codas. When Chris Corry’s and Dan Ducas’s guitars aren’t jelly-legging around Iommi, they’re rekindling “Neon Knights,” brandishing “Die Young” credo. Meanwhile, Q clubs the kit like a drunken Ginger Baker. Brendan Radigan stakes a big, black flag in vocal territory long occupied by Saint Vitus, Saxon, Armored Saint and Trouble. Bassist Justin DeTore alternates creepy crawl and thunder word belch, laying yoke over each tune and driving them predjudicially underground. But motherfuck simply “sounding” like these bands. Magic Circle celebrates them, and in doing so honors the form they have found. It’s heavy metal. Hit hard. Write riffs that clack along like rustbucket tanks into perpetuity. “Play” bass in ways that make you at once inseparable from every punch the drummer lands, and also ghosts every riff—working beneath, between, behind the rhythm. Sing that fucking story as every ancient did their Homer. It means something. It stands for something. Bring that to the tape.  And so Magic Circle does. Tunes...